Handmade ravioli, Sicilian pizza, oil and vinegars aplenty: CT’s DiFiore Ravioli Shop & Italian Market
DiFiore Ravioli Shop & Italian Market of Ellington sits in a cozy, 200-year-old colonial home at the corner of Somers and Crystal Lake roads. There are no three-lane highways or crowded intersections, just Connecticut greenery and farmland.
It’s a surprising location for a pasta shop, some would say.
“I’ve lived in Ellington for the last 34 years,” said owner Don DiFiore. “When the opportunity came to build in Ellington … we decided to jump on it and open a second location.”
DiFiore’s has been around since 1982, when it was called “DiFiore Pasta Company, Inc.” The original location was on Franklin Avenue in Hartford before moving to Rocky Hill and, later on, Ellington. Today, DiFiore runs his namesake business exclusively from Ellington, while the Rocky Hill location is run by a business partner.
“I’ll be 66 this year,” said DiFiore. “Sometimes, I was driving back and forth to Rocky Hill twice a day. I would feel like that location was being ignored. It was a win-win for everybody.”
Since opening the Ellington location, DiFiore’s has garnered a dedicated community happy to see the unique business in its quiet town, in large part due to his family’s upbringing in Massapequa, Long Island.
DiFiore’s and New York City
If you go a century back in time, to when DiFiore’s grandparents first came to the United States, you will find a bakery on Sullivan Avenue in Greenwich Village established in 1904.
“First-generation Italians came over at the start of the 20th century,” said DiFiore. “My grandparents were first generation.”
Even through the Great Depression, his grandfather’s bakery did well. He put his children through college with the money he made.
Eventually DiFiore’s parents moved to Connecticut in Avon and his father worked as a machine executive for Royal Typewriter Co.
“You walk down streets and corners (in New York) and there are world-class bakeries and delis,” said DiFiore. “Coming from that culture up to Connecticut, which is very vanilla-box kind of cuisine, my parents had a longing to open some sort of food business.”
At that time, Hartford’s Franklin Avenue had a booming Italian-American culture. It only made sense to set up shop there and open DiFiore Pasta Company, Inc. — even if his parents were at the spry, youthful age of 62.
As DiFiore notes, “They worked through their 80s.”
Come the 2010s, with both parents ready to retire, Don DiFiore was given a bit of “friendly encouragement” to take over the reins.
“I had a bit of pressure from my family members. I was the only one who had been in the food business.”
Looking back, however, it made sense to pivot his career back into the restaurant business. His son, then 19 and an aspiring chef-to-be, joined him in taking on DiFiore’s. They redid the business with new logos and a more retail-friendly name: DiFiore Ravioli Shop.
Changing times, new locations for DiFiore
While the initial transition went great for DiFiore, the culture around their Hartford location was changing. Many of the Italian Americans had moved south to towns like Wethersfield and Rocky Hill. The latter, it turned out, would be their next location.
“The prospect of taking over a space in Rocky Hill came along,” said DiFiore. “We jumped at it. We made a great offer. We were following our customer base to a certain extent.”
Their new location was big success. It didn’t take long to eye up another expansion. Few would have guessed Ellington, however, except for DiFiore and his family.
“We really liked the peace and quiet of Ellington. The interstate doesn’t run through the town. It’s an agricultural-based town. We love it.”
More so, a business as unique as DiFiore’s was a hard find for many in the area. To this day, they pull in customers from myriad towns.
Plus, as DiFiore puts it, owning a business that is down the street from where you live has its perks.
Ravioli, pastas, Sicilian pizza, and a plethora of oils and vinegars
Customers might be surprised at just how robust DiFiore’s selection is given the old colonial building they occupy. Most striking for newcomers is the selection of oils and vinegars.
“We have 12 to 15 different selections of flavored oils and vinegars,” said DiFiore, like Tuscan herb-infused olive oil and garlic-infused white balsamic.
“We make 15 different types of ravioli,” said DiFiore. “There’s usually 10 different sauces to choose from, too. There’s quite a few different combinations to make.”
They also sell Sicilian pizza: thick, soft dough with mozzarella and tomato sauce on top. “The first flavor that hits your tongue is tomato, which I prefer,” noted DiFiore.
Different pastas like linguini, rigatoni, and fettuccine are prepped daily with 50- to 60-year-old equipment his parents had used back in the 1980s. Antipasto ingredients fill a set of display tables, ranging from picked peppers and caper berries to eggplant spread.
DiFiore also sells a medley of take-home dinners priced by the pound. “There’s salmon with risotto, chicken parm with penne, tortellini with lobster. We do all kinds of different dinners.”
For new visitors, however, he recommends picking up some ravioli and chicken cutlets; his two biggest sellers.
